Update! Werner Herzog’s New 3-D Film to Be Screened at the Festival

As previously announced, Werner Herzog will talk with Judith Thurman on Saturday, October 2nd, at the Directors Guild. We’re proud to announce that the event will include the U.S. première of Herzog’s 3-D documentary, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.”

In making the film, Herzog gained exclusive access to the thirty-five-thousand-year-old paintings in the Chauvet cave, in the south of France—the oldest known pictorial artwork in existence. After the film was screened this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Timeswrote:

In the hands of Mr. Herzog, the ancient paintings are a fairly wondrous experience. The horses, cave bears, rhinos and lions on the undulating walls of the cave look as if they were done by painters on the order of Matisse. Scientists studying them, who were interviewed in the film, have a way of drifting into dreamy speculation about those who traipsed through the cave before it was sealed by a rock slide, maybe 20,000 years ago. One said he dreamed of lions for days after looking at the paintings.

Herzog was inspired in part by Thurman’s piece “First Impressions,” which ran in the magazine in 2008. After the screening on October 2nd, Judith will speak with the filmmaker about his process, the caves, and the origins of human expression.

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